The Queen of Darkness
by BarboraMars
Summary: POST 5x22 Like the fire that burned in her veins instead of blood, she destroyed everything in her path. ONE-SHOT


_AN: Hello there, everyone alright after the finale? No? Thought so. _

_Here's something to cheer you up during the hiatus. Or not. _

_Anyway, enjoy and let me know what you think! _

* * *

She was the queen of darkness.

The blackness grew darker as she walked through the night.

Feared, ruthless, all consuming.

Like the fire that burned in her veins instead of blood, she destroyed everything in her path. For centuries, she hadn't found a match. No one to stand up to her, no one to challenge her – after all, they knew the stories carried in the wind, the breathless whispers, witnesses of the unspeakable cruelty and hate, the untamed power she possessed.

All the world has shrunk when she passed by. Just like the patrons of the filthy bar she found herself in right after lightning cut through the midnight sky. Ironically, even her hometown didn't like her presence anymore.

Her latest prey turned his head down, keeping it low under her scrutinizing gaze. He knew what was coming for him. He'd pray for death with the break of a dawn, she'd make sure of that.

For now though, there was one more thing for her to do. Now that she let him know it had no point for him to run, she could go and try to remember.

Mystic Falls was never her place of choice. She hadn't set foot in the town for five hundred years and she had no desire to stay longer than necessary but… she wouldn't be there if a part of her, the shattered remains of her long forgotten humanity, didn't beg her to go.

She was determined to silence their voices for good.

So there she was now, wandering the empty streets she barely recognized, letting her feet drag her to the place she couldn't think about for so long.

The gates weren't standing anymore, they were replaced like everything else, like she replaced herself half a century ago.

But still, blindly, she found what she was looking for.

His gravestone read only three words. Her mind slowly absorbed each of the letters but wouldn't let them turn into something else, wouldn't let her hear his name, not now, not ever again.

She traced it with her fingertips, more gently than anything she'd ever done since she last touched him. They cut into her like shreds of glass, one by one, leaving her with nothing but silent pain she could only almost feel.

Her cheeks were damp, her whole body felt heavy like the date that stared at her from the stone in front of her.

He promised her forever and that's what she'd got, but living it on her own was never part of their deal.

She saw him before her eyes. She saw him at every corner. She always had. No one could ever make that right. And no one could ever understand.

She hated him. She hated him almost as much as she missed him.

Faintly, she still remembered the moment she'd lost herself for good.

_Numbness. _

_That's all there was for a very long time. She could hear the birds chirping in the distance, the sound of the wheels of a car hitting the pavement, the hollering wind ruffling her hair. Distinctly, she could even make out all of their voices. Some days. _

_They were speaking words that made no sense, reaching a hand down her shoulder, drawing circles on her back in an attempt to reassure her._

_She knew why they tried, but didn't know why they wouldn't give it up. _

_She'd even talk to her brother sometimes. She'd come up with lines she thought were used in a conversation and tell him not to worry. They had each other. They would be fine. _

_At the end of the day, she'd smell him on his sheets. She'd feel his hand in her hair. She'd stop fighting the emptiness overtaking her. _

_There were wounds that never healed. She had experienced them first-hand, with every death she'd watch and stagger through, the seemingly endless list of devastation she had compiled throughout the years. _

_Yes, there were wounds that never healed. _

_But what about those that made her bleed out? Over and over again? _

_She tried to hold onto all of it, every part of herself that burned under the icy blue eyes in her dreams. But every morning would find the mirror seeing less and less of her… until there was nothing left._

_Liv and Luke were the first ones to go._

Reminiscing on the bloodshed she left in her wake wasn't something she did happily.

Mostly because her hands would still shake under the weight of their limbless bodies. They didn't give her what she wanted and she simply couldn't take it anymore.

Maybe, just maybe, she could have survived his death.

But she couldn't survive her own.

Once upon a million years ago, she used to think the worst thing to happen to a person was to lose themselves. And she would still think that if she were capable to think about anything at all.

She sat down on a bench near his side. For a split of a second she wondered who'd keep it there but she already knew the answer to that (it was Alaric, _who else_, but she didn't think of his name either these days) and every unnecessary trip down the memory lane was something to be avoided.

She saw him, out of the corner of her eye. He was always there, watching her, haunting her. She had spent decades looking for him, following his disembodied form, driving herself mad with yearning. And he was gone every time she'd reach for him.

After a while, she made peace with the fact that she was losing her mind.

A few centuries later, she came to the conclusion he was the one crazy, not her.

She didn't try to talk to him and he would never speak either. He'd just stand there, motionless, unbearable, impossibly far.

It didn't feel real for the longest time. To be honest, it still hadn't for her. But now, there was a stone in front of her with his name on it and she could feel the blood spilling out in streams. The storm was inside her, similar to the way water slowly filled her lungs when she drowned lifetimes ago, the water was blood and it was his blood, he was inside of her and she was dying. Dying again and again and again. She couldn't fight it and she couldn't stop it and all he'd do was watch.

She closed her eyes. The faint touch of his fingertips on her cheek was her favorite death sentence.

"I miss you." She swallowed her tears. _Don't go._

* * *

'A vicious animal attack' was the headline in the news the next day.


End file.
